Boats - Fibreglass - Recreation - Commercial - Boating - Gold Coast - Australia

MAKING SERIOUS BOATS FOR SERIOUS USERS
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THE SEAFARER FIBREGLASS BOATS STORY

 Seafarer Fibreglass Boats has been continuously producing fibreglass boats on Queensland's Gold Coast since 1957. Although best known these days for its highly successful range of family and offshore sports boats, the company has a remarkable depth of experience in producing fibreglass hulls of every kind.

Doug Fry, company founder and father of the current proprietor, Lindsay Fry, was the first person to produce an Australia designed deep vee fibreglass hull, the Vixen 13 footer in 1960. In the early days they also produced a highly successful motor sailor, the 20' Mirror, and later produced hovercrafts on government contract as web as large fly bridge cruisers.

With the Seafarer name firmly established and a string of classic hulls to its credit Doug Fry, passed away in 1969, leaving the company under the care of professional management for a number of years.

Obsessed with boats and boating, building his own timber sailing boats and then fibreglass runabouts in the factory, Lindsay Fry learned every aspect of the trade. He operated his first outboard powered boat at the age of 8 a small dingy powered by a single 3hp Johnson.

Lindsay Fry virtually grew up in the Seafarer factory, working on every part of the manufacturing process, then fishing and boating in his spare time. It is this background saturated in the technology, then end use of the product, that has made him one of the most insightful designers and builders this country has ever known.

He had his first major input into a new model in 1969. His father had designed the 5.Om half cabin Venus just prior to his death, and with that boat on the market, Lindsay conceived of the idea of the cuddy cab V-Sea based on the same hull. That boat went on to become the biggest selling fibreglass fishing boat in the history of the Australian boating, industry, with over 2,000 hulls produced and sold. Benefitting from upgrades over the years, the V-Sea remains a classic best selling fishing boat today.

Although manufacturers had been making boats with half wells and outboard pods for some years, the introduction of the 5.9m Victory in 1992 redefined the concept. A very much refined pod design, the Victory performed as no other fibreglass boat had done before it, and the big boat became an overnight success at a time when Australia was in a deep financial recession New 5.5m and 5.Om hulls using the same pod formula continued to score with the boating public, until Seafarer was far and away the largest producer of fibreglass fishing boats in the country.

This success can be measured by the fact that the company went from a staff of 15 to a staff of 50 after the release of the Victory and sales have increased 400 per cent since that time. The Victory alone has accounted for over $10 million in sales and is still selling as well as it was in the first year of release.

Since the release of the Victory, every new model to come out of the factory has won major boating awards, including a number of Excellence Awards, Boat Of The Year by category, and Outright Boat Of The Year on two occasions.

Seafarer has not only greatly increased the number of boats it sells, it has also significantly increased the dollar value of each boat by offering an enormous range of accessories to enable each and every buyer to customise the boat to his exact requirements. The company has also introduced a number of highly innovative firsts, including being the first to offer thru-hull transducers as part of the basic boat package, and factory assembled turnkey packages,

Another major innovation introduced by Seafarer was the sports console. Centre console boats are normally designed for the hard core fishing trade, and the style is usually incorporated into basic, low cost rigs. In what was generally thought to be an incredibly high risk gamble, Lindsay Fry designed an up-market console in a stylish sports boat, and released it as the 5.Om Vamp. It seemed that the more cautious observers may have been right when the boats initial sales were very quiet, but then as the boating press began to discover just how good the model really was, sales began to pick up and have been on the increase ever since.

With the introduction of its first dual engine pod on the 6.2m Venom Sports Console, Seafarer took full advantage of the greatly improved outboards being released in the mid 90s, powering it with twin 115 hp Evinrudes to achieve 100 Km/h top performance, coupled with fuel saving low rev cruise speeds. The boat has been a brilliant success from the day of release, as well as the cuddy and cabin versions that would    follow. Performing well with twin 70-90hp engines, this hull puts twin engine security into an affordable high performance package.

The current development plan at Seafarer has seen all of the existing styles carried through into a massive 6.8m hull, then there are top secret projects that the company hopes will again redefine what we classify as optimum power to weight ratios from hull/outboard combinations. By continually delivering increased performance from its hulls, Seafarer brings down the power required to push the boats, and thus offsets a lot of the price rises associated with new model development.

Perhaps the thing the company is most proud of is its reputation for building boats that don't break, are hard to wear out, and hold resale like no other marine product.

With 10 per cent of its output now going to export, and overseas interest rapidly increasing on the reputation of the product alone, Seafarer is a solid gold Australian company with unlimited potential in front of it for the future.

ABN: 43 009 756 478

ACN: 009 756 478